Notebook

ROCK STAR: The now-famous 4.5 billion-year-old hunk of meteorite that may have once contained microscopic Martian life. Last month's historic announcement that a Martian meteorite found on Earth may contain vestiges of ancient microbes (D.S. McKay et al., 273:924-30, Science, 1996) has spawned all manner of comment. The American Physical Society's Robert Park opined in the August 9 issue of his online newsletter, "What's New," that the discovery may save United States taxpayers billions of dollars. An emphasis on robotic exploration, Park suggested, might "eliminate the rationale for building a [$90 billion] space station." In keeping with the pop-culture iconography that the red planet inspires, 1960s TV star Ray Walston-also known as "My Favorite Martian"-played along in a tongue-in-cheek radio interview a few hours after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's August 7 press conference. Walston told Bob Madigan, afternoon coanchor at WTOP-AM, a Washington, D.C., news station, that he always knew there was life on Mars. And predictably, the tabloids claimed government subterfuge. Headlines on the cover of the August 27 National Examiner blared "Mars Coverup. There's more life in space than NASA's telling you." The news has even affected a gambler's earnings: According to Reuters, a British punter named Steve Upton won $1,540 on a bet he placed in August 1995 that extraterrestrial life would be discovered within a year. (Unfortunately for Upton, his bookie dropped the odds from 500-1 to 25-1 within the last year.) The day after the press conference, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center in Florida issued a press release describing its new "Mission to Mars" exhibit. The displays celebrate the July 20, 1976, Viking Mars landing and the upcoming Surveyor and Pathfinder missions, among other Martian facts and figures. Visitor Center spokeswoman Melissa Tomasso calls the timing a "convenient coincidence." GOOD NEWS: Commerce Department's Mary Good get chemistry's highest honor. Department of Commerce undersecretary for technology Mary L. Good will become the first female winner of the 1997 Priestley Medal, the highest honor of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Good, 65, will receive the award for her overall contributions to the field of chemistry, including academic, industry, and government service, according to ACS awards administrator E. James Bradford. A well-known proponent of government support for emerging technologies, Good has served four United States presidents in several advisory posts. She was a member of George Bush's President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, was part of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Systems and Technology Advisory Committee, and was chairwoman of the National Science Board from 1988 to 1991. Good taught at Louisiana State University and at the University of New Orleans in Baton Rouge until 1980, when she left academia to become senior vice president for technology at UOP Inc., a Signal company, which later became Allied-Signal Inc. of Morristown, N.J. Says Good: "It's extraordinarily important that people understand what the 21st century will look like in terms of overseas competition. The real issue is how to generate well-paying jobs for the future. Clearly, technology will be a large part of it." Good, a former ACS president, will receive the gold medal at the society's national meeting in April in San Francisco. The medal honors distinguished services to chemistry, commemorating the work of 18th-century chemist Joseph Priestley, credited with discovering oxygen. A gene involved in controlling the life span of a worm, C. elegans, may help provide clues to human aging, researchers say. Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that the mutant version of the gene, dubbed the age-1 gene, resulted in a doubling of the adult C. elegans life span. Gary Ruvkun, Jason Morris, and Heidi Tissenbaum isolated and determined the DNA sequence of the normal and four mutant forms of the C. elegans age-1 gene. They reported their work in the August 8 issue of Nature (J.Z. Morris et al., 382:536-39, 1996). "[The question is,] How relevant is worm aging to other organisms?" asks Ruvkun, an associate professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. He points to previous research by other scientists as evidence of counterpart genes in humans. He acknowledges that he "wouldn't be surprised that [a system] we find in the worm might be present in other organisms. We think that the way the system is controlling aging is under endocrine control. The organisms show evidence of endocrine disruption. We think it might involve the pituitary axis in higher mammals." The next step, he says, is to prove that such systems in worms, mammals, and humans are somehow similar. Anna McCormick, chief of the biology branch of the National Institute on Aging Biology of Aging Program, notes that numerous genes are involved in the aging process. While "it wouldn't surprise me to use this information in looking at the human condition," she says, "we have a lot of work left." There seems to be increasing acceptance of the notion that frequent Web surfers can become addicted to the Internet. In an article headlined "Internet Addiction: A New Disorder Enters the Medical Lexicon," a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns that "psychiatrists and family physicians may soon be called upon to treat this latest unforeseen consequence given us by the brave new world of information technology" (M. OReilly, 154:1882-3, 1996). The article quotes clinical psychologist Kimberly S. Young, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh's Bradford campus, who established the Center for On-line Addiction (COLA) in response to the "clinically significant disorder." In an E-mailed message to The Scientist, Young acknowledges that she has "no estimates of prevalence" of Internet addiction, but says, "COLA began after a year of research pointing to significant academic, social, and occupational problems resultant from Net overuse." Estimates may come soon from Viktor Brenner, a doctoral psychology student at the State University of New York, Buffalo, who has spent the last several months tabulating results of his online survey of Internet use and abuse (Notebook, The Scientist, April 29, 1996, page 30). According to the center's Web page (http://www.pitt.edu./~ksy/), COLA "has identified problem areas that mental health professionals, educators, and human resource managers are experiencing due to individuals' becoming addicted to the Internet in the same manner one would become addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling." Asked about the irony of a Web page for people who may be addicted to the Internet, Young replies simply that it was "initiated after seeing a need for that type of consultation service." SYNERGY: Paul Hanle aims to more fully integrate academy research, public education, and exhibitions. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia has named Paul A. Hanle as its new president and CEO. Hanle, who had been executive director of the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore since 1987, became the Philadelphia academy's 25th president on August 26. He oversees a staff of more than 275-almost half of whom are scientists-an annual budget of nearly $15 million, and taxonomic collections totaling more than 25 million specimens. The academy, founded in 1812, is the oldest continually operating natural history museum in the United States. One of Hanle's goals is to more fully blend the institution's environmental and biodiversity research programs with its public education and exhibition missions. "We want to integrate all the aspects of the academy in a way that is synergistic and reinforces positively all of its individual activities," states Hanle, who is trained as both a physicist and a science historian. Just as important, he says, is raising the academy's public profile: "I want to get our programs better known to the general public." The academy's public-outreach programs serve 58,000 people, and nearly 250,000 visitors view the museum's public exhibitions each year. MAN AND MYTH: Actor Andre Sachs plays the title role in PBS' "Einstein Revisited" Love affairs. An out-of-wedlock child. Problems at school. Aaron Spelling's latest teen soap opera on Fox? Actually, it's all part of "Einstein Revealed," a two-hour special that will kick off the 23rd season of PBS's "Nova" on October 1. The aim of the project, says coproducer Thomas Levenson, is to present this century's most influential physicist as both a scientist and a man. "I don't think it's possible to separate the two," Levenson contends. "Usually [biographers] have done either the science or the man. To me, Einstein was a person whose core identity was as a scientist. That's what he thought of himself as." Using documentary footage and dramatization, the program devotes considerable time to Einstein's personal life as well as his scientific theories. computer-generated animation illustrates his greatest achievement: the revolutionary general theory of relativity. "Albert Einstein is famous and an icon and almost a myth, not because he was some impossibly remote figure but because he was a specific human being that did incredibly significant things in specific times and places," Levenson states. "Einstein Revealed" is scheduled to air from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.; check local listings for stations. OUTREACH: Lovell Jones' cancer-prevention efforts have garnered kudos. Lovell A. Jones may be best known for work on the mouse model that establishes the relationship between exposure to estrogenic compounds and cancer, but he takes his greatest pride in his work in cancer prevention in minority and underserved populations. "[These efforts] have, at times, overshadowed my research efforts," says Jones, who cofounded the Intercultural Cancer Council, a multicultural cancer prevention and control organization. In January, he was a session chairman at a National Cancer Institute conference aimed at boosting minority clinical-trial recruitment (M.E. Watanabe, The Scientist, April 1, 1996, page 1). Now Jones, director and professor of experimental gynecology-endocrinology and professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and gynecologic oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, will get recognition from his institution for his minority-outreach work. He will receive one of five Faculty Achievement Awards at the center's Faculty Honors Convocation on September 12. Jones's award, which is for cancer prevention, comes with a certificate, a medal, and a research fund of $35,000. An outspoken advocate of more culturally sensitive methods of conducting and recruiting minorities into cancer clinical trials, Jones notes that the award is a surprise because "research that deals with underserved minority populations doesn't receive a lot of recognition." Among other accomplishments, Jones was a founding member of the National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer, served on the national Coalition for Cancer Survivorship Board of Directors, and chaired the American Cancer Society's South Central U.S. Regional Hearings on Cancer and the Poor. Others who also will receive M.D. Anderson awards are Randy J. Legerski, associate professor, molecular genetics; William K. Plunkett, Jr., professor of medicine and chief, section of cellular and molecular pharmacology; Raphael E. Pollock, chairman, department of surgical oncology; and Merrick I. Ross, chief, melanoma/sarcoma section, department of surgical oncology.

Notebook

The Scientist Staff

Sep 1, 1996

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